Week 6: Best twist in a book?

[Liz]

So I don't know how many of you follow the library's Facebook, but I put a "One Minute Book Club" prompt up there each week: https://www.facebook.com/ChesapeakePu.... I thought this week I'd ask you all the same question I asked our facebook followers:
What book has the best twist? Imagine you could forget you ever read it and experience it for the first time again.

The inspiration for this question was Gone Girl. I read the book when it first got huge, before it was ever slated to become a movie. I was among the few who didn't really like the book. Then, this past weekend, I watched the movie, and it changed everything. I think the movie did a better job with the twist than the book did, and it actually made the book better in my eyes.

This started me thinking, What other books have really good twists? And it's not always easy finding suggestions for that type of book so I thought I'd pose the question here and hear about readers' real experiences.

Feel free to share what you're currently reading, as well.

I need a new audiobook to listen to this week. I am working on What If? by Randall Munroe of http://xkcd.com/ and my hold for Neil Gaiman's new book Trigger Warning just came in. I'm looking forward to reading it.

[Jodie]

I know it is an older book, but I still can remember my reaction to the twist in Anne Rivers Siddons' "Peachtree Road." I was so invested in the characters that this book is the second in my life that brought me to tears (the first being Charlotte's Web). The twist made you think how different everything would have been if ... I read it a long time ago; I am thinking I need to re-read!!

[Ann]

There is one that I just thought of, And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander. Emily agreed to marry Philip, the Viscount Ashton, to escape her overbearing mother, so when he died not long after the wedding, she wasn't too upset. She hardly knew him. Then two years after his death, she finds out what kind of man he was, and finds herself falling in love with him, only to face his loss all over again.

[Liz]

Thanks for sharing, Jodie and Ann. Twists in books and movies always seem so risky to me. Sometimes they are really good and pay off, but a lot of times, I feel like they are too predictable or trite. I'm glad to hear of some other books that are have great twists!

[Julie]

The Friday Night Knitting Club actually threw me for a loop. I remember finishing the book and not believing it had ended like it did.

I don't know that it was a twist in the usual sense, but I was surprised by it.

[Ingrid]

Shutter Island. I never saw that one coming. It's also a time when I liked the movie AND the book.